All three are plate wearers. I don't see the problem. Dump the +defense on plate items, leave the trinkets and stuff for cross-class.

Additionally unless they change mechanics if all they are tanking is casters they don't need to be crit immune, it might be a good idea to be in case they do get swung at but how many warlocks tanking Leo or Illidan were crit immune?

While moving the defense rating off armor would help the other three tanking classes we will still want alternatives for optimal gear, but this is all based on another assumption. Do tanks, not us specifically, still need -5.6% crit against plus three mobs?
I see a lot of us talking about it as that is what we expect but has anyone tested it? I am not in beta but if I was I don't think I would have tested it as I would be leveling and providing what useful feedback I could.


Seminarca I agree with you on the strange obsession that some people have with getting parry, as long as the total avoidance we have is comparable to the other tanks it doesn't matter where it comes from.
Having said that we are in a situation where we only want a couple of stats on our ideal gear, this is less than ideal due to the way the item budget works.
I haven't seen anywhere the agility to dodge ratio is listed either, it isn't in the http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t29453-c...gs_level_80_a/ or the first post of this thread, which hasn't been updated for a while.
Searching through the thread now:
This post claims it will be the same as rogues.
Melthar posted, "I know our agi:dodge/crit ratios are being changed".
kalbear asked the same question.
Astrylian posted some data but not knowing all the details I can't work out the new agility:dodge ratio and this is obviously not at 80 anyway.
Zhoreilh posted, "Agility/dodge ratio seems to be 19.5 for 1%@70".

That 19.5 figure seems the same as what my alt rogue is getting now, is there a way of working out the scaling assuming we have the same ratio as rogues?
Any of you guys in the beta think to record your agility:dodge ratio as you leveled?

Well put, Tappin. Posted that in the feral concerns thread in the beta forums for ya.

The other way of thinking about it is fine too. Scaling off only one or two stats is fine, as long as you itemise that way, and the numbers work out. Quite frankly I'd prefer it as a feral druid if I didn't need to get 2 completely different sets of gear. The problem at the moment is we don't have that flexibility (outside of pretty much full sunwell gear).

The comments about lower level gear are right on, but actually independent of the particular stats, it's a matter of scaling. In that sense they did get some things right. The (TBC) agility to avoidance ratio is actually right about where it should be if you compare it to an item that splits defense and dodge, and those two rating actually give about the same avoidance per point (assuming you can parry). Warriors actually have quite a base avoidance advantage over ferals, although we scale slightly better mostly due to sockets and enchants.

The crit immunity is a bit of red-herring, lack of it is what makes it difficult for us to get together tank sets atm, but that's more of a result of typical itemisation patterns than anything else. If we could work on average damage, feral tanks would currently run around without crit immunity, but still with a non trivial amount of defense (and dodge), which suggests that we a fair bit of non-optimal avoidance because it's on items which have desirable other properties usually bonus armour (or a lack of other tanking options).

In short it all comes back to armour values. Fix that (in the right way) and then you can look at how to deal with the other problems. The main problems there are: the mechanics of bonus armour, lack of ability to enhance base armour (a scaling issue), and the armour cap (potentially). I've outlined my solution earlier (no bonus armour, armour multiplier applies to body armour only), and if that body armour resulted in say 120% of the plate + shield armour value for a warrior, it'd fix most of the other problems. The armour cap would be unreachable, I wouldn't be stuck wielding badly itemised +armour weapons. Would it be over-powered? Perhaps, but it would be a lot easier to balance and itemise for. My feeling is we'd still collect (or socket) some items as tanking items.

The other way is an option, but honestly I feel's it's never really going to work out. If you add bonus armour to any slot, then almost by default that makes it the best feral tanking item. Give us parry or block and then defense becomes a bit better, but you really need to give us both to make it work. Unless you make our stats exactly the same as what the other tanks want, their gear is going to be suboptimal, which forces them to make feral tanking gear. In that respect, with the badge gear and the like things are a lot better than they used to be, but it's still very patchy. Thus, I'd prefer a solution which made it easy on the itemisation team, and which made it easy for us to gather the required gear.

This is somewhat true, but at the same time misleading. In most of the existing encounters we do this all the time, what's the best way of balancing mitigation, avoidance, threat, stamina? Agility is mainly concerned with avoidance and threat, but it is hardly the best stat for increasing threat, especially in a main tanking situation. Fix the armour issue and it's harder to change your mitigation, but I note there are fights that warriors use the feral cloak, so that dimension still applies. Without having to worry about crit immunity it does make things a bit easier, but I note that my tanking gear is currently quite different from my dps gear, and only one or two of those pieces are for anti-crit. While it's true that we may switch roles within a single fight a bit better than say warriors, they are looking to buff the protection trees, especially for dps, and it's actually very rarely a reason to bring someone to a raid.